Pale Horse Coming

by Stephen Hunter

  But the old man seemed unperturbed, merry even, and that’s what upset the deputies. He just sat there with a mellow grandpappy look on his face, in his three-piece black suit with his tie all neatly tied up in a bow, his huge Stetson down to his ears, and he drank.

  He drank, he drank, he drank.

  “Don’t know how a fellow swallow that much dadgum white lightning and stay sittin’ up,” said Opie.

  “He must have the constitution of a horse,” said Skeeter.

  “He drink more, we don’t have to whap him none a-tall. No sir, he’ll just fall over blindy drunk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But that wasn’t what had them so spooked. That wasn’t why they’d sent their third member, Darius, to get the sheriff.

  What spooked them was: Where’d he come from?

  The old man was just there, sitting in the bar.

  No boat had arrived, no horsemen had fought their way through the piney woods, no automobiles had suddenly come roaring up a suddenly cleared road. So where’d he come from? How’d he get there? Who was he? What was this all about?

  “I say we go in there and thump him hard.” This was Skeeter. Skeeter was the master of the billy club. Skeeter could beat a tattoo on your arm so fast that arm would be dead for a month. He could slap you upside the ear hard enough to kill, to stun, to daze, to annoy, all with the flick of a wrist. His club hung on a leather thong off his supple right wrist.

  “Hmmm,” grunted Opie.

  “Just go in, do it. He’s a old man. We cool him out, handcuff him, and then off he go to the station. That’s all that is. And we git to the bottom.”

  Opie chewed this over. It seemed okay. But he didn’t want to make the wrong decision.

  “Pret’ dadgum soon the sheriff be here. He’ll know what to do. Meantime, this ol’ boy just filling himself with rotgut, getting blurrier and blurrier. Let him drank himself to perdition, that be all. That’s what the sheriff would want.”

  “I don’t like it none.”

  “I don’t like it none nohow neither,” said Opie. “But that is what we going to do, dadgum it.”

  And dadgum it, that is what they did. In forty minutes or so, Sheriff Leon Gattis himself arrived, to find the scene the same. His two deputies were outside, peering in. Inside, the old man sat merrily by himself at the table, drinking jar after jar of white lightning, getting himself all lit up to hell and gone.

  “Don’t see how that boy is still standing,” reported Opie. “All that corn shit he got in him.”

  “That ain’t the problem. Whar’d he come from?” asked the sheriff.

  “Don’t know. He just come from nowhere, out of the air. Sheriff, I say we go in and thump him hard and brang him down. Then we git to the bottom of this.”

  Why was the sheriff reluctant? Why did he have an odd feeling in his gut? It was that the whole thing was so ghostly, somehow. It had the feeling of the remembered, or the previously glimpsed. He had already seen it, in a movie or a book or something. Very strange feeling.

  The old cowboy sat there in the saloon. The funny part was, there wasn’t a twitch of fear on him. He’s either crazy or goddamned stupid as they come, and he didn’t look neither. There was something bull-goose loony about the man, and the sheriff, at one time a New Orleans detective (a long, tragic story), had seen it on a few of the big-gun boys of the thirties. The Pretty Boy had it and the Babyface had it even more. Johnny D. had it best of all, that sense of masterly command, that sense of self-regard of the truly dangerous.

  “Goddamn, Sheriff, he just a old man. A drunk old man. A very drunk old man.”

  Besides Skeeter and Opie and Darius, the sheriff had brought two more boys. That meant six.

  “All right,” he said. “We goin’ do it this way. Ray, you go ’round back. Work in that way. Gun out. You stay just inside the doorway, cover that old geezer from the rear. That’s just in case. The rest of us wait five minutes, then we go in and brace him good. Listen up, y’all. This boy look old and drunk, but to me, he also looks a little salty. He been around some. He may still be fast, some men don’t never lose their quick. He may have some quick on him still. So you got your hands on your revolver grips so you’re ready for your own quick, if it comes to that. It don’t hurt none to be all set, all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the boys, and Ray peeled off for his back shot. Then it was only a question of waiting.

  THEY didn’t come slyer than old Ed McGriffin. He had a diamond ring on his pinky, given him by the president of Smith & Wesson in 1934, when he had set a world speed record, firing six times in four fifths of a second and hitting a man-size target in the gut thirty feet away in a group small enough to be covered with one hand. As he sat in the bar in Thebes, he held the jar in one hand, and slid his pinky underneath. It didn’t take much grinding. Diamond always beats glass. In less than five seconds, he had drilled a hole in the bottom of the jar.

  What commenced thereafter was a little old-salt theater. He plugged the hole with his finger, raised the glass to his mouth, let the foul stuff touch his lips, but did not admit it. Christ, it would blind a white man in three sips and put hair on his palms to boot. Then, he moved the jar to the edge of the table, let his finger slip off the hole and in that fashion bled out a gulp’s worth of lightning. He’d done this through five jars now, and his left boot was sodden with the corn alcohol. Drop a match down there and he’d explode in flames. But otherwise he was just fine.

  He picked up on the deputies right away. Subtle boys they wasn’t, no, sir, not by a long shot. One, particularly idiotic, kept pressing his nose against the window, flattening it even further. He was the big dumb blond one. The other one was furtive, feral even; looked like a weasel, dark and skittery, with tiny teeth.

  “Say there, Pops,” called out old Mr. Ed. “Bring this old feller one more toot, okay?”

  The two elderly black men behind the bar eyed each other nervously. They didn’t like this a bit. Not that they cared about crazy old white boys, but such a situation could get them in trouble with Sheriff Leon and his deputies, who tended toward extravagant solutions for simple problems. The place could get busted up bad; they could get busted up bad.

  On the other hand, they were of a generation where disobedience to a commanding white person was unthinkable. It simply was not conceptualizable, so they greeted the paradox with utter sullenness and desperation.

  One tottered over, filled the old boy’s glass with the white lightning, of a very fine vintage: 2:00 P.M. that afternoon. He’d never seen a man, white or black, drink so. Should be blind, as the stuff was about 600 percent alcohol. It wasn’t designed for refinement, but to hit with a sledgehammer after the first swallow and blot out a man’s terrible pain for a whole night. This old geezer had had enough to blot out the whole damn prison farm’s pain.

  “Sir, the deputies in this here town don’t cotton to no strangers. You could git yourself into a tub o’ trouble.”

  “Oh, I’m the sort of fellow who gets along with everybody. If they show up, I’ll buy ’em a drink, and we’ll have a laugh or two about it. I’ve many an entertaining story and have traveled the world, so nothing in Mississippi frights me much. Whyn’t you and the other grandpappy pull up chairs? Be pleased to buy each of you a slug of your own damned hooch.”

  “Sir, they wouldn’t cotton to no Negroes and white mens sitting at the same table, neither.”

  “Now, don’t that beat all. I say we’re all on this earth together, and the sooner we learn to git along, the better off we’ll all be. Bet your damn blood is just as red as mine.”

  “Sir, I—”

  But the door opened and five white men, large, armed and grim, entered.

  “Willie, you knows it’s well past curfew for Negroes here tonight,” said the blond one.

  “Sir, I tried to ’splain to the gintleman that—”

  “Boys, boys, boys,” said Mr. Ed, “it was me that insisted that these fine gents stay open and serving. Is
there a fine? By God, boys, I will be proud to pay it up. Whyn’t y’all take a load off and come over and share a tot. Mighty fine. Burns on the way down, and burns way down afterward. Fire in a bottle.”

  “Sir, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but we have rules in this town.”

  “I’m sorry? Don’t hear so good now.”

  “Rules, goddammit. We don’t like strangers coming in and riling our colored folks. We don’t like strangers buying liquor after hours in colored joints. We don’t like curfew violators, outside Northern agitators, commies, Jews, Catholics, bleeding hearts nor other race traitors. We charged with keeping law and order down here in this powder keg, and goddamn we do it right dadgum good.”

  “Well, fellows, I sure ain’t no commie. I actually may be Catholic, but it was so long ago, I don’t remember. I certainly haven’t been to confess—”

  “Sheriff, the old bastard’s funning on us. He ain’t showing no respect at all. Let me clock him a good ’un.” With that, the blond one flicked his wrist so his club came into his hand, and he smacked it hard against the palm of his other hand.

  “I’m sure this old boy don’t need no beating on his old head,” said the sheriff. “Sir, you just stand up and raise your hand. We’ll search you, we’ll cuff you and take you off, and get to the bottom of all this.”

  “Sir, the bottom of all what? Here I sit, in a public place, drinking quietly. Surely that’s no—”

  Whap!

  The young deputy pounded the table with his club, making the jar jump and rattle. The report of the percussion filled the air sharply, seeming to bring dust off the ancient rafters.

  “You keep your goddamn mouth shut, pappy, when the boss here is talking. You in a heap o’ trouble.”

  “Sir, we’re done playin’ here. You get on up and cooperate, or you will be a sorry pappy.”

  “Why, sir, I meant merely—”

  “Goddamn you, sir!” the sheriff exploded, “this is not no time for palaver. You get yourself up!”

  He loomed, eyes abulge, face grave, leaning forward in a stance of sheer aggression, his hands twitching.

  “Okay, fellas,” said Mr. Ed.

  He rose.

  His coat parted.

  They saw his revolvers in two strapped-down holsters.

  A long moment of silence came.

  “Sir, you will with opposite hands remove them two guns or by God we will shoot you down like a diseased animal.”

  “See, I’m thinking you all the ones going to put down the guns.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You no nevermind that. It ain’t yours to know. You only have to know that the night of reckoning has done come.”

  “He is talking through his hat, Sheriff. One old goddamned big-talking old geezer.”

  “Shut up, Opie. Them guns are tied down old-timey gun-boy style.”

  “Now fellows,” said Ed, “here’re the two things that can happen. First off, I’m thinking I want your guns out, opposite hand, on the table. Then you strip bare-ass naked, not no skivvies, but buck bare as the day you born. Then you go down, lie in the street while I figure what to do with you ’til the prison’s burned flat then flooded over and all them Negro fellows you done been beatin’ on are free and clear.”

  “It ain’t never happening like that, old man.”

  “Then, boys, seems to me we are at where we were going the whole time. Palaver’s over. Nothing left to say. You throw down and die like men or I will simply shoot and move on.”

  “You are a goddamned big-talking fool, old man.”

  Ed was done talking.

  Opie drew first, and possibly a tenth of a second later the sheriff made his play.

  It didn’t matter.

  Smooth is fast. Ed was so smooth and fast with both hands the revolvers were simply there, as if by will. It was not a physical act but a metaphysical one. His big hands flew, his fast-twitch muscles twitched, his dexterity was simply unrecognizable by human standards.

  He fired five times in less than two-fifths of a second, the reports hung together like a single loud repercussion, as dust jerked from the old rafters above and the jars on the shelves rattled. This was well off his world-record speed, but it was fast enough by a far piece.

  He knocked three down dead, Opie first (left ventricle), then Darius (throat), then a boy called Festus (solar plexus). They fell like tenpins bowled hard, with a thump to the floor, heaving more dust up as their heavy bodies yielded to gravity, each dying on the way down as the blood emptied from organs and spurted under arterial pressure into geysers. Skeeter fell slower, but fell just the same.

  The sheriff had been shot last because he was slowest. He sat down, holding his gut.

  “You have killed me, damn you, sir.”

  “I have, sir, for your evil ways.”

  At that point a small sound announced the presence of another gunman behind, as the deputy Ray stepped clear to fire. But Ed had heard him long ago back in there raging around like a bull, and simply pivoted his right gun hand under his arm and with circus-freak twistiness fired at the sound, after complex, nearly instantaneous deflection calculations in a brain that had fired several million revolver bullets in its time. The bump of Ray hitting the bar, then pulling jars down with him in a shower of shattering glass clatter, ended that drama quick enough. Ed didn’t even look around.

  “Who are you?” gasped the sheriff.

  “We rode in from the river.”

  The sheriff’s passing lacked movie drama. He simply slumped over, his eyes gazing forever into the eternal darkness. He didn’t fall or scream or moan; he stopped breathing is all.

  Mr. Ed turned. The two old Negroes were clasping each other in fear behind the bar.

  “It’s okay, fellows,” he said. “Nobody here is going to hurt you no more.”

  “Ain’t never seen no shooting like that.”

  “It is a night of fancy shooting. Now I am going to sit on the porch a bit and watch all the fireworks. My suspicion is that you’d be well charged to wake up your people. This is the night it all changes in Thebes, and they’ve got work to do yet.”

  61

  CHARLIE had worked well into the sheriff’s station compound between the town and the prison. He was alone. The dogs slumbered or moped in their kennel, the only light that burned was in the lock-up fixed to the Big House. In the stable, the horses dozed.

  It was a quiet Southern night. A soft zephyr of a breeze weaved through the piney woods all about, and the odor of the needles was clean and fragrant. Overhead, the stars, undimmed by moonlight, shone radiant and dazzling.

  Charlie noted none of this. His mind didn’t work that way. Instead, he visualized his course of action. How he would move, what he would do at each spot, what was important, what was not.

  He was not a man without fear. But he enjoyed his fear. Perhaps it was even sexual, for he found himself with, among his guns and firebombs and pouches of shells, a rather large boner in his tight jeans. He took a moment to get it adjusted so it wouldn’t hang him up one way or the other.

  He crouched beside the lock-up, simply breathing, running a last equipment check, flexing and unflexing his muscles, wondering when to start. Earl had said midnight was a good guess, but that it couldn’t be counted on. Depended on when the sheriff made his play in town. He had seen the sheriff, alerted by a deputy, mount up and head out with two other men about an hour ago. That was the only action, and it had settled down quickly enough here.

  He waited, kept checking his watch. It was now close to 12:30.

  Then he heard it. It was a fast crackle of shots—so fast it had to be Ed McGriffin shooting, for no man could shoot so fast. The sounds were soft and muted, but the wind carried them along. Behind him, in the kennels, he could hear the dogs stir. One or two seemed to pull themselves up and sniff the wind, alerted in that secret dog way to the presence of aggression and fear in the air.

  Charlie knew it was time.

  He r
ose and walked around the corner of the lock-up. A fellow came out of it. It was Pepper, the dog man, who usually worked a late shift in the lock-up, though that building was empty.

  He saw Charlie.

  Charlie saw him.

  Pepper—Charlie of course did not know his name—was incapable of imagining an assault on this place. Though the man before him was strange, his assumption was that he was okay. He was fine. He was one of them.

  “Howdy,” he said.

  “Howdy,” said Charlie, and shot him in the throat.

  Eighteen.

  That report was loud enough and close enough to awaken most of the deputies who slept in the big pinewood station. Lights came on, and the sounds of men struggling reluctantly to consciousness swam from the open windows of the big place.

  Meanwhile Pepper sat down slowly, with a stunned look on his face. Charlie, replacing the revolver to its speed-scabbard, a nifty tight holster made by a Mr. Chic Gaylord in New York City, smiled at him as he died. He seemed to bear him no animosity. It simply had had to be done.

  The gun replaced, Charlie walked swiftly to the Big House, reached into his canvas pouch and pulled out the first of his firebombs. He quickly unscrewed the lid, and yanked the cord. Nothing happened. It didn’t sputter to life at all.

  “Damn,” Charlie said, and threw it through the window into the room, where it came to rest on the floor. He drew, aimed with all his bull’s-eye precision and quickly fired.

  The firebomb detonated. It wasn’t an explosion so much as a kind of burbling, though of intense white flame, not liquid. The flame was so bright Charlie blinked at flashbulbs popping off in his brain as if he were the president just arriving.

  Somewhat dazzled, still blinking, he walked along the porch until he reached another window. He removed a firebomb, pulled the cord, and this time was rewarded with the fizz of fuse. He tossed it and it blew, but so close to him it scared him. It sloshed white flame through the room like a spilled pail of milk, and where the fire lit it caught and the room was ablaze in seconds.